


Bit Trap

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 14:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ratchet gets into trouble, and Drift has to bail him out. for tf-rare-pairing challenge prompt 'poisonous'.  Mostly silly angst, if that's a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bit Trap

 

He knew the instant he heard the plate shift under his footplate that he was slagged.  His fault, too, which only made it worse—the sting of punctured pride on top of the curved cybertusk gouging into his ankle.  Great idea, Ratchet. Why not go scout the old Decepticon medibay, by yourself? What could go wrong?

Something exactly like this, he figured. Booby trap from an old Insecticon husk.  Just because the war’s over doesn’t mean anything was safe. He knew better. He felt stupid. He didn’t like feeling stupid.

Well, on the bright side—such as it was—at least today couldn’t get worse, he thought, opening a comm channel to the Autobot bay.  

Please, Fixit, he thought.  Pick up. 

“On.”

He couldn’t recognize the voice, timbre soft, fuzzed from the distance and the radioactive crackle of the still poisonous atmosphere. 

“It’s Ratchet. Kind of in a situation.”

“Situation.”  The voice buzzed. “What kind of situation?”

“A trap situation.  In the old Decepticon medibay.”

A sound he couldn’t make out. He muttered to himself, frustrated at the niggling voice in his head: he should recognize this voice. He knew everyone who worked in the medibay.

“On my way,” the voice said, a little louder, like the vocalizer had come closer to the audio pickup, right before the feed cut. 

Frag. He knew better: never say things couldn’t get worse.  Because that was when he placed the voice: Drift.

[***]

“Ratchet?” The voice filtered in from behind him, the main entryway. 

Ratchet huffed, cursing his luck. “Here.”  The pain in his foot was beginning to spike, like a cold fire spreading slowly up the fuel lines, the kind of cold so deep it ached.

Foosteps, closing in, that light rolling shuffle of a combat mech in a dangerous situation, and then the distinctive white helm and its swooping finials emerged from the shadows of the door. The blue optics scanned down, and then Drift nodded, as though to himself, moving in and down onto one knee. 

“I know this type,” Drift said, head bent over the floorplate. “Old kind of trap. I can disarm it.” 

Yeah, great thing, Ratchet thought, sourly. But he didn’t have much of a choice, so he stood as still as possible, trying to hide his obvious frown as he watched Drift dig out around the floor plating with one of his blades.

He looked up, with what he probably thought was a consoling grin. “Good thing I came along. These can be tricky.” 

“That’s not exactly comforting,” Ratchet said “I laid hundreds of these, when I was one of them,” Drift said, turning back to the floor tile, his voice distant and conversational. “There are only two ways to wire them.  You can daisy-chain them really easily, which is what I’m checking for…now.”

“You know,” Ratchet said.  People had periodically critiqued his bedside manner, but he’d never said anything about chained munitions.     “I could do without the play by play.” Because thinking about chained munitions was really not an uplifting though. 

Drift quelled into an almost sheepish silence, turning his attention to the wires he’d exposed, reaching into a storage compartment for a tool.

“Besides,” Ratchet said into the sudden quiet. “The trap’s only part of it.”

“Yeah?” A quick glance of the blue optics, before Drift went back to concentrating on whatever he was mucking with under the floor.

“Insecticon tusk,” Ratchet said. “And I think I can still see the venom sac.” It was discolored and flaking with neglect, but that didn’t mean it spelled good news.  Especially not with the cold ache creeping ever higher up his leg. 

“One thing at a time,” Drift said, sounding calm enough, but he moved with a new kind of haste. “Just hang on.”  

Time stretched, tighter and tighter, the silence thickening, until Ratchet heard a small click, and Drift gave a triumphant little noise, pulling out a small component from under the floor, dangling it by one wire, like a trophy. “The detonation charge.”

“Put that away!” Ratchet didn’t like explosives.  He’d spent too many cycles repairing the damage from the fraggin’ things. Guns, even swords, were better weapons, from a healer’s perspective—straight cuts, cauterized holes: explosives were pure metal warping chaos.

Drift blinked, chastened, before mumbling, “You can step off the plate now.” 

It took a moment for Ratchet to shift his weight, the limb having locked from time and the cold pain filling it.  But he lifted it, as Drift moved to raise the tusk out of the way.  They both tried to ignore the pinkish clotty energon that pushed out, sluggishly, from around the puncture. 

 

Ratchet groaned, the knee giving, and he would have stumbled to the ground if Drift hadn’t lunged forward, catching him with his arms around Ratchet’s waist. 

“Got you,” Drift said, hauling him back upright, steering him to an old crate.  Ratchet found himself fumbling along with Drift’s lead, until he was resting on the crate, twitching as it wobbled on one corner. “Now, let’s see that foot.”

“No.”

“Ratchet.” 

Cute. Really. Drift was trying to mimic Ratchet’s ‘shut up and do as I say’ tone. And failing. Which made Ratchet think. “What the frag were you doing answering the medibay comm?”

“I. Uh. I was there for a systems check.” He rubbed his chestplate, where the seams were still solder-rough.  “Fixit was busy with someone and I was…you know, right there.”

Ratchet just glowered.

“What? He was busy. I knew from the comm coordinates where you were. I can handle it.”

“You,” Ratchet said, jabbing at him with a finger, “are barely out of regen yourself. And you just admitted you were there for a systems check, meaning one of your gauges is off.”

“I got here fine,” Drift said, with a slow, almost deliberately uncomprehending blink, though Ratchet knew he knew what Ratchet meant. “And you’re a medic, so if anything happens….”

Ratchet made a noise of pure frustration, the kind of sound only Drift could pull from his vocalizer. Thick-helmed, slag-for-brains, reckless idiot!  ‘Drift’ was just shorter to say. 

“Besides,” Drift said, kneeling, and taking Ratchet’s punctured foot to examine.  “I can help. Kind of…at loose ends with the end of the war and everything.”

True enough: the warriors had lost their favorite hobby of trying to kill each other in a variety of horrific ways. 

Drift looked up, something almost imploring in his optics, a need to be helpful, do something. It was so different from all those years ago, when Drift had been shut off, closed down, only thinking of himself.

Ratchet huffed, shoulders sagging. “You bring a kit, at least?”

“Of course.” Drift pulled the medikit from his storage, holding it out sheepishly. “Uh, I figured you’d know what to do with it.” 

Ratchet snorted, taking the kit. At least he brought it, and wasn’t pretending to know what to do with it.  “There’s an antivenom in it, but it might not work.  Insecticons bred through probably a hundred generations.” It was a concern—the concern—that had been gnawing at him while Drift had worked, a different kind of cold pain, the thought that the venom might not be neutralizable. 

He could come up with something. He just had to be stable enough to get back to Kimia, the ersatz medibay he’d set up there. 

Drift shifted forward on his footplates.  “I can help, maybe?” He cradled Ratchet’s foot in his hand. “I saw how they did this on Earth, with snakebites.”

“Did what?” Ratchet fumbled through the chempacks in the medikit, guessing what might work.

“This.”  And he felt a warm contact on the puncture wound and a hard suction as Drift’s mouth planted itself on the open wound. 

“Gaaaggh!” It felt strange, heat against the spreading cold of the venom, pulling it down, the ache seeming to swell and build down by his ankle again. 

Drift turned, spitting out a mouthful of rancid looking bruised-purple gunk, corrupted energon, and then went back, sucking out another mouthful.  Ratchet wanted to complain—actually, he wanted to kick Drift in the head for being so reckless, but he could feel it working, the venom retreating down his leg, autorepair cycling on. 

Drift repeated the cycle, sucking and spitting out the vile stuff, until Ratchet stopped him with a hand to his crest. “Done, now,” Ratchet said, and his voice was the softest it had ever been talking to Drift, who normally got his special ‘you’re going to be the death of me one day’ voice. Drift looked up, a wobbly smile on his face, optics bright, wanting praise, or just acknowledgement he’d done something good. “Stupid, but it worked,” Ratchet said, grudgingly. 

“Story of my life,” Drift said, rising to his knees, reaching for patch tape to seal the cut line, but there was no bitterness in his voice, just a sort of wry self-awareness.  Maybe he had learned something, after all. After nearly fraggin’ killing himself underground. 

Or maybe Ratchet shouldn’t get his hopes up.

Ratchet took a moment to inject himself with velocirol, to speed up his autorepair. It would make him run a little hot, but he could use it, after the cold pain of the venom. "Keep trying," he said, reboxing the injector, almost thoughtlessly, automatically, marking it as used, needing to be autoclaved.  

"I do," Drift said, and he leaned closer, his optics bright and earnest and seeking something in Ratchet's face, one hand moving, cautiously, toward Ratchet's shoulder.  

Frag, Ratchet thought, his fuel pump suddenly spiking in a way he couldn't entirely write off as the velocirol, his own frame leaning in, closer, almost against his conscious will.  He's going to try and kiss me. And I....

And Drift reared back, suddenly, spinning on one toeplate, dashing around a corner, where Ratchet could hear the all-too-familiar sounds of retching, as the venom took its revenge on Drift.  He swore again, grabbing a packet from the medikit before pushing to his feet, gingerly placing weight on his foot, hobbling around the corner to find Drift bent over, rib struts fluttering from the strain of purging his tanks.  

He put his hand on the white mech's back, the comforting touch of a medic.  "It should pass." 

Drift gave a bit of a nod, staring at the ground, the puddle of fuel he'd vomited before pushing back gingerly to rise t his feet.  "Just...not the epic rescue I'd kind of wanted." 

"Hmmph," Ratchet said. "I'm no judge of expert, but any rescue where you bring your mech home in one piece counts as a win to me." He pressed the packet into Drift's hand, meaningfully, waiting until Drift sucked part of the fluid down.

"Looks like you're rescuing me, now," Drift said, shakily, aiming for a smile and just about grazing the outer edge of it.  

 "Rescuing each other," Ratchet corrected, firmly. "Now. Let's see what we've got here, and then head home."  

 


End file.
